


Mend

by tsukikomew



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-24
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-10-10 03:44:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10428390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsukikomew/pseuds/tsukikomew
Summary: After Oliver returns in 5x17, Felicity has to deal with the fallout and gets some advice from an unexpected source.





	

“I’m a killer.”

The voice is soft and broken and the short shudder throughout his body is enough to cause her to pause. The gauze is a reddish-brown and all she can do it is go back to handling the wounds. She can’t say anything because she’s afraid she’ll cry. She has to be the strong one for the moment. She has to shoulder his burden because he is not able to shoulder it himself. 

Like when Sara died, she knows if she falls apart no one else will get to. The team needs their leader and in his stead she will keep the group moving forward. They are casing the city, looking for evidence of Chase even though everyone knows he will not be found. He’s too good. So she soldiers on, wiping blood, sweat, and tears from the strongest man she knows.

He shakes when the gauze ghosts around the edges of his burn and she stops, waiting for him to calm. It takes far longer than she expects for him to relax but finally he stops shaking and waits. She checks his eyes and notes he’s looking through her. She’s seen this before from others. It’s shock mixed with an almost childlike demeanor. 

She lightly covers his wounds with more gauze and considers where to go next. When she tugs on his hand, he stands and follows her silently into the makeshift shower. She considers having him undress alone and shower but realizes he won’t be able to do it alone. She reaches for his pants and undoes the zipper, tugging them down. She tosses the pants out of the space noting he seems to be injury-free on his bottom half. 

Around his waist she tucks a towel, covering him. There is something fragile about him and it worries her. She stands him in the center and vanishes for long moments. When she returns with a chair she finds him standing there staring at nothing. It takes only a touch to put him on the chair and only seconds to get the water ready for him. 

He panics slightly when she turns the shower on and so she changes her plans. She leaves him again and returns with a spray bottle and starts to spray his hair. He calms immediately and relaxes as she only sprays at his hair, pulling the grime and sweat from him.

As she massages shampoo into his skull she freezes when he reaches up. His fingers, unsure and unsteady, touch her glasses. Pulling them from her face he holds them in his hands tightly. Her vision is slightly blurred around the edges but she watches him finally close his eyes, clutching the pair of glasses in his hands. 

He lets her rinse his hair, lets her bathe parts of him and even lets her gently dry his battle-worn body. He keeps his eyes closed and sometimes she feels an involuntary shudder. Finally finished, she looks around for something to put him in. He doesn’t even open his eyes when she leaves the room, searching for his clothes.

She dresses him in sweats and worn flannel shirt. She remembers the shirt from their vacation a couple of years ago and remembers the long night in front of the fire and the open way he spoke with her about Hong Kong and the early days on the island. It was a start and more than he had told others. 

“Are you hungry?” she asks him. He doesn’t answer as he glances down at his bare feet. “Right...socks. I always forget socks.”

He follows her this time to the other room. He’s slow and unsteady but he follows her. Her glasses are still in his hand and his eyes are still hollow but he’s moving and alive and that is something for her to hold onto.

“Socks,” she offers when he sits on the cot he called home after their break-up. He looks at her but doesn’t reach for them. It’s like she’s not there. He’s not seeing her right now. He’s lost somewhere and she can’t find him yet. She tugs the socks on and helps him lie down. She lifts his head and slides a pillow under. She waits until his eyes close again and his breathing starts to level out.

It’s only then she lets tears fall.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The team wants to stay. They want to help her take care of him but she doesn’t let them. She doesn’t want them here. Oliver wouldn’t want them there. She calls Thea and begs her to keep running City Hall. She begs her to not come right now. It’s John she has to threaten to leave. He’s never seen Oliver like this and he’s just as worried about her as he is of Oliver. Regardless he is dispatched with orders. The recruits are similarly sent on their way with errands to run and missions to fulfill.

Alone in the bunker, Felicity thinks. She’s been thinking a lot recently about a lot of things but this is different. Oliver is broken or at least badly bruised and he is in no condition to make decisions. Instead she makes them.

She spends a great deal of time re-mapping Oliver’s route back to the bunker. He moved slow but she still loses him. She tries to find where Chase had him but she ends at a loss. She’s going through blueprints when a bag of food lands next to her hand. She jumps upright, swinging for a punch. She stops just short of decking Quentin.

“Do you really think you could take him on?” Quentin says. She must look crazy but she just squints and waits silently. “When did you last sleep?”

“What day is it?” she rasps. She turns and picks up the warm water bottle and drinks deeply. “What are you doing here?”  
“Thea called me. Why didn’t you?”

“I was a little busy,” she says crossly. 

“How is he?”

“Not good,” she admits. She slumps into the chair. “I’ve never seen him like this. After he told us he was quitting all of this, he’s said exactly one sentence to me.”

“Which was?” Quentin asks as he sits down in one of the other chairs. 

“I’m a killer. That’s it. He’s skittish and silent and not in a brooding-secret-man way but in a broken-fragile-man way. He’s sleeping now I think.”

“He’s a killer? Not to be on the anti-vigilante train but we kind of already knew that,” Quentin replies.

“Yeah but this was different. He didn’t say it like he used to when talked about his mission. He sounded like he was confessing, like it meant something more.”

“You know him better than anyone. What does he mean?”

“We’re not as close anymore,” she says softly.

“Bullshit. You two are still just as close as you’ve always been. You just aren’t sleeping together not that I want to think about that,” he says. “Look you two may think your not ‘together’ but trust me, you two are ‘together’. When Dinah left me I knew it was over. Sure I hoped, of course I did, but I knew we were done. We weren’t speaking the same language and we didn’t want the same things anymore. No one has ever wanted the same things as much as the two of you.”

“Quentin,” she begins, shaking her head.

“No. Look I know things happened. I know he screwed up and I know you lost faith. I get it. I’ve been lied to for years and I got angry and cut people off,” he explains. “I lost that time with Laurel. I lost those months because of my anger with her. I lost those months I fought Oliver over him being the Green Arrow. Maybe if I hadn’t been angry...maybe if I had just reached out...Laurel would still be alive. Maybe Darhk wouldn’t have come to power.”

“Quentin.”

“I know, I know. It’s not my fault. I can’t blame myself. I’ve gone through the therapy and I’ve accepted it. My point is...bad stuff happens and bad decisions are made. We can lose our way. The point is to not lose sight of what matters. You two love each other more than anyone I’ve ever met and you two are the most stubborn people. Are you two really going to continue pretending you guys are over? Are you two really going to waste the time you have being unfulfilled? You both are smarter than that and I’m not saying you just forgive him and let it go. I’m just saying maybe you both have an opportunity to reassess who you both want to be and whether or not you want to be those people together. Now eat your burger and call me when you need something. Make sure he eats too.”

He leaves her there thinking about what he said and the smell of a Big Belly Burger. Before eating she sits a meal next to the cot and hopes he’ll eat when he wakes up.  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She wakes up with her forehead mashed against the keyboard. Glancing at her reflection in the computer monitor, she notes the impression of the ‘e’ key on her forehead. Sighing she rubs the grit from her eyes and gropes through her bag for a spare set of glasses. In the past couple of weeks she’s lost one pair and now Oliver is holding the other hostage. Soon she’ll just be partially blind.

She nearly falls out of her chair when she finds Oliver sleeping in the chair next to her. His color is a little better and she stops herself from touching him. He needs rest and so does she. She reaches out to take the glasses and suddenly her arm is in a vice-grip. She barely has time to react before she is thrown to the floor and Oliver has a hand on her throat. 

“O...Oliv…” she wheezes. He doesn’t seem to hear her and for a second she’s confronted with the fact he might not let go. Her fingers reach up and grasp his shoulders, pushing. The computer falls, screen shattering by her head when he throws his body backwards. He curls into a fetal position and refuses to look at her. Coughing and massaging her throat she rolls to her stomach and comes to her knees.

“Sorry...sorry,” he whispers. 

“It’s…” she can’t say okay. She can’t bring herself to say it’s okay. It’s not. She pushes it aside and moves closer to him. He’s been tortured and she renews her hatred for Adrian Chase. Her fingers slip down his face. “Did you eat?”

He doesn’t answer.  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Two days later he’ll give her one word answers or short sentences but he still says virtually nothing. She finds him in the middle of the night, padding around the loft, relocking things and nailing windows shut. She tries to get an explanation but he just touches her glasses and turns back to his hammering.

Thea stops by once but struggles to stay when Oliver refuses to talk to her. Instead she holds down the fort at City Hall. Adrian Chase returns to work and gives a press conference updating the city on the Mayor’s whereabouts. Felicity nearly breaks the tv when she hears him say that Mayor Queen is recovering after his ordeal and his assailant has not been caught. Oliver watches in silence and then returns to the kitchen, stirring something he has decided to cook.

Felicity peppers him with questions periodically but he almost never answers anything meaningful. The only long sentence he utters reaffirms his commitment to hanging up the hood. Otherwise he haunts her loft and stares out the windows. 

It’s the middle of night when she wakes to him sitting on the bed beside her. She sits up and reaches for the light but his hand stops her. He pulls it back and folds his hands in his lap.

“What is it Oliver?”

“I’m a killer,” he begins softly. 

“Oliver...why is this so important to you?”

“Chase wanted me to confess my secret. That’s my secret. I’m a killer because I like it. It’s who I am.”

“This is how he broke you?” she asks. “He got you to admit a half-truth. Oliver...you know better.”

“I’m the Green Arrow...the Arrow because I like to kill.”

“I don’t believe that,” she says. He seems to broken, so guilty in this confession and she can’t believe he believes this. 

“Other people have told me before but I denied it. Chase made me realize they were right. I’m not a hero.”

“If you liked killing...and I don’t think you do, why did you not kill for so long?”

“I don’t know. I guess it’s like an addiction and I was...sober?”

“I don’t believe that either. When Quentin was against the Arrow after Sara’s death, you told him you don’t do it for the credit. You weren’t killing then. You killed out of necessity. Ra’s? Darhk? You had to do that. One for the many.”

“I enjoy it. I…”

“So...what exactly? What does this mean for you moving forward? If you feel the need to kill...how will you satisfy your darker desires? If you remove the Green Arrow from the table...then what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me about those six days Oliver. You want commiseration and I can’t give you that without knowing. What happened between you and Chase? Don’t say no. It’s time we start talking. That’s always been our problem, right? Not communicating.”

“I don’t know where to start.”

“Start at the beginning and stop when you reach the end. I’m here for every moment. Let’s start there.”  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
“What hurt me was the fact you kept that from me Oliver. We were building a life and you just...cut me out. That was devastating.”

“I know and I told you about Samantha’s rules but at the end of the day I made the call. You have to understand something though. I was planning to tell you before I ever confronted her. I knew...I had to be sure first and I was waiting for the DNA. Then Barry...he told me when you found out, you told me we were over and I was distracted. That was part of the reason we failed.”

“So it was Barry’s fault?” she asks.

“No. It was mine. I just made a poor decision because of that and then...I didn’t know how to come back from it. I wanted to tell you before I proposed and then...you found the ring. I kept quiet because I didn’t know how to tell you and then with Darhk. I just lost my way and then it got harder and harder to tell you because the longer it went on the more I knew it would end the way Barry said. I just...I was scared. I love you and suddenly I had this thing in my life that I never saw coming. I didn’t know how to handle it and I guess I’m just used to dealing with everything.”

“I get that. I do. You’ve been alone and in charge for so long. I get that. I just thought you trusted me and when confronted with that, I lost faith.”

“I know,” he whispers. “I stand by what I said last year. I will never lie to you again and I know I’ve ruined that trust but I won’t lie again. I won’t keep things from you.”

“I understand.”

“It hurt me when I found out about Billy,” he admits. “I thought we were getting closer again and I was starting to hope you’d forgiven me and then I found out you had been in a relationship for awhile.”

“I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“Sounds familiar.”

“Are you saying it’s the same thing?!”

“No.”

“Good because that would be incredibly stupid,” she bites back. Somehow they ended up on this topic instead of him finishing his Chase story. Maybe it’s for the best as they start hashing out where it all went wrong. This one decision was the beginning of this whole horrible year.

“If I could take it back, I would,” he admits. “You know that. You know how I feel about you.”

“Do I?” she whispers. “Because if you really felt that way then you wouldn’t have cut me out. You would have told me. Like you said, you know what secrets do to people.”

“Remember when you got scared last year and worried you were losing yourself in our relationship and you said you were learning how to do all of this?” he asks, reaching for her hand. As her hand slips into his he continues, “I’m learning too. I know I...make it seem like I have it all figured out because of the way I handle the team, but half the time I’m lost.”

“So where do we go from here?”

“I don’t know.”  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
Over breakfast he tells her the rest of the Chase story and she considers it. Oliver has always had a darkness inside. The thing is, she understands darkness. She understands it in a way she never thought she would. 

“Why didn’t you kill Slade?”

“Slade?” he asks absent-mindedly as he washes dishes. 

“Why didn’t you kill Slade? Or Merlyn? You let them live. You let a lot of people live over the years. China White? Cupid? Deadshot? Why not them?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes you do. Why didn’t you let John die from Deadshot? It would have been so easy. Merlyn, even easier. Slade was like shooting fish in a barrel at the end. Why did you save so many people?”

“Because that’s what I thought was right. No one liked it when I killed,” he replies before turning towards her.

“No we didn’t but I can understand it. When you went to face Ra’s I begged you to kill him. I want Prometheus gone. I wanted you to take out Darhk. I understand the urge. It’s easy. It just ends the problem. But you have told so many of us the pain doesn’t stop right?”

“Yeah but it’s different because you haven’t...”

“Killed? Maybe not by choice but I have thousands on my conscious.”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“So you think it’s easy and it is. Chase broke you down to who you were. When we met, before then, that’s part of who you were. You were a killer and you owned that. You never pretended to be anything else but let me ask you something. If killing was your entire motive then why did you come home? If your mission was really about you wanting the violence and to kill then why bother coming home? You could have done that anywhere. You could have even come here and been the Arrow. Why did you do all of this?”

“Because I…”

“Why Oliver? It’s not a difficult question. Don’t pretend I’m other people. I know you. I know you better than I think you do.”

“I…I wanted to be normal. I wanted it more than anything.”

“More than killing.”

“Yes.”

“Then what you confessed to Chase is only half the story. You seem to missing all of the good, all of the positives you brought to this city. You were happy in Ivy Town. I brought you back to this Oliver. I begged you to come back. You would have been perfectly happy in the suburbs and I don’t believe for a second you would have resorted to killing the neighbors.”

“Felicity…”

“No. You need to realize that finding killing easy is not the same as loving it. Wishing for control and simplicity does not mean you are a villain. And no matter what that man said, we are not better off without you.”

“You can’t know that. You can only stand there because of Curtis. Not knowing me...think about it. You wouldn’t have been shot or kidnapped or forced to divert a nuke. You wouldn’t have lost Billy or lost Laurel or Sara. They would all be alive right now. Thea wouldn’t have gone through bloodlust. Tommy? My mother? All of them.”

“Merlyn would have destroyed the Glades. Darhk would have destroyed the world. Barry would never have become the Flash. All the lives all of you have saved, including my own would be gone Oliver. I would have been in that Queen Consolidated cubicle until the world ended. You made a difference in all of our lives and I don’t think any of us would trade that. I know I wouldn’t. I told you once you weren’t done fighting. You still are not done fighting. Maybe it’s fighting against the darkness. Maybe it’s fighting against crazy people like Chase. Either way you are not done and I refuse to do this alone.”

“I don’t know if I can put on the Hood again.”

“One step at a time Oliver. That’s all anyone can ask.”  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
“You’re going back to work tomorrow?” 

“Yes,” he replies. They have been watching some silly, black and white movie but now she feels it’s time to talk about something else.

“Are you and Susan…?”

“I can’t imagine she’d want to be anywhere near me but it was over before then.”

“Good,” she says softly. She can feel his eyes on her. 

“What are you and the team going to do now?”

“Keep fighting,” she says simply. “I told you I knew what I was signing up for and I still believe that. We’re not done yet. Where are you going to be?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay.”

“Where does this leave us Felicity?”

“I don’t know. I guess, on the mend?”

“I can live with that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yes I know, it's not a "Remarkable" update or an "IYE" update. They are coming (I promise). I actually was working on chapter 22 when I watched the new episode. I was inspired with this concept and I wanted to address it. I actually find how quickly OQ bounces back after this stuff to be baffling. 
> 
> Regardless I'm working on "Remarkable" first and hope to have both chapters out shortly (soon...). I've had a lot of personal life stuff and work life stuff get in the way.


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